Web creator Tim Berners-Lee duped by online fraudsters

16 March 2009 | 9439 views | 1

On the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web, its creator, Tim Berners-Lee has revealed he is among the millions of users to have fallen victim to online scammers.

Speaking to UK broadsheet the Daily Telegraph, Berners-Lee says he was duped into buying a Christmas present from a fake e-commerce site. When the present failed to arrive he called the 0800 phone number listed on the site only to encounter a message informing him the number was available to buy.

It is 20 years ago that Berners-Lee, working at the Cern nuclear research centre in Switzerland, published a proposal outlining his plan to help scientists share information electronically.

He says that, although there are now many good things about the system he created, there are also "some nasty things", requiring authorities to put as much effort into tackling cybercrime as they do into real-world offences.

He also calls on Internet service providers to do more to make customers safe online, suggesting the introduction of systems to isolate computers infected with malware.

A recent survey from CyberSource found that security fears are stunting the growth of e-commerce in the UK, with refusenik consumers citing media scare stories and personal accounts of online credit card fraud as reasons for not shopping on the Web.

More than half the UK population still does not shop online and of these 41% cite security fears as a cause for concern.

Comments: (1)

So ... "More than half the UK population still does not shop online and of these 41% cite security fears as a cause for concern".

Do they appreciate that staying offline will not save them from CNP fraud? One of the crucial lessons of the recent massive breaches at processing centres is that organised crime is obtaining credit card numbers from conventional merchants, and then replaying
them online. So you can try to 'play it safe' and never shop online but still have your account abused online.